Submitted by Mary Jo Boland
Health Resource Libraries, Gundersen Lutheran Medical Center, La Crosse, WI
The Gundersen Lutheran Medical Foundation was looking for a way to keep track of publications by hospital researchers. They contacted the library staff, and the GLine project was born. The GLine project was a joint effort by staff from the Library & Health Information Services, Information Systems, Research, and Nursing Research departments. The GLine database was created using RefWorks software, and made available on the Internet via RefShare software.
The GLine Database is available on the Gundersen Lutheran Intranet; the public can access the database via the Gundersen Lutheran Medical Foundation Research page. The database is searchable by author, descriptor, periodical and keyword. Search results can be sorted by title, publication year, publication type and many other options. Another feature of the database is the easy creation and printing of reference lists or bibliographies. GLine provides links to any available full text (for those on the Gundersen Lutheran network). Within RefWorks administration, there is a section that provides a link to OVID Linksolver (or other OpenURL servers).
For those who want the technical details, the Information Systems department created an easy-to-complete online form, made available on the Gundersen Lutehran Intranet. The information from this form goes to an Oracle database, which is accessed by the database editor and library staff. The database editor uses search capabilities within RefWorks to search PubMed and other databases for bibliographic records for any published materials. Because the searching is done from within RefWorks, the bibliographic records are downloaded seamlessly into the GLine database. Information about poster presentations, book chapters and patents must be input into the RefWorks database manually. There is some clean-up work involved, due to differences in the way descriptors are handled in the PubMed and OVID versions of databases. Essentially, we use the main descriptor, and strip out all the subheadings. A training manual provides instruction on using RefWorks, editing records in RefWorks, and adding hypertext links.
For more information, or a copy of our training manual, contact me at mboland AT gundluth.org.